Posts tagged player-skill

There are a lot of reasons I love MMOs, but one of the reasons is the fact that there are so many possible goals in any given game and so many different reasons to pursue them. Even in games with more limitations, you've still got a surfeit of character options, moreso than in almost any other ge...

With RaiderZ's closed beta rapidly approaching, it's not a half-bad idea to see the game in action before deciding to make the leap into it or not. Massively has obtained footage of a boss fight that shows a group of players taking on a mighty stone golem that's being piloted by a rather cute gob...

Are you starting to grow bored with summer? Do you wish there were something new to check out? Perfect World has the answer to summer duldrums, as its action-MMO RaiderZ is finally going into closed beta on August 8th. The new testing phase will raise the level cap to 30, add the Makot Village, a...

If you're an overachiever who loves to plan your future character's career months in advance, then today's the day to get out your graph paper and get to work on your RaiderZ adventurer. Perfect World has released its second dev diary about the action MMO, this one focused on the character creati...

Admit it: Deep down, you dream about beating in-game monsters to death with their own severed limbs. Who doesn't? Happily, RaiderZ makes that dream a reality, as is demonstrated in the game's most recent developer diary.
The video diary goes over tactics and playstyles for handling monsters...

TERA isn't the only upcoming MMO to feature big-ass monsters and action combat. Perfect World Entertainment showed us a demo of RaiderZ at last weekend's PAX East, and producer Mark Hill was pretty enthusiastic about the game's level of polish. He also made a point of highlighting the amount of f...

I'm going to let all of you in on a secret. Actually, it might not be a secret; everyone might have figured this out by now independent of any admission on my part. But here it is, just the same.
I'm not actually a very good City of Heroes player.
I mean, I'm "good" in the sense that I play the...

OK, so you've heard about this whole Global Agenda thing, and you've talked yourself into giving it a shot. It's completely free-to-play from start to finish these days, and the Unreal graphics, sci-fi setting, and strange mixture of hyper-competitive PvP and ultra-accessible PvE have always held...

Today it's time to tackle the somewhat touchy subject of player skill in MMORPGs. With Guild Wars 2 touting its active dodging system and TERA just on the horizon with its action-based combat, many games seem to be attempting to force individual player skill to weigh more heavily in overall gamep...

If you've been following recent game development, you will have noticed that action-based gaming, or gaming that requires a player to literally control the character on the screen through mouse-clicks or shortcuts, has become all the rage. It shouldn't be surprising, though, considering how incre...

Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column.
One of the most troubling things I see in gamers these days is th...

If you're a bit apprehensive about the balance between progression mechanics and skill-based gameplay in Red 5's upcoming Firefall title, you're not alone. You're also in luck since senior designer Dave Williams has just posted a new dev blog on that very topic.
So what's the answer to this age-...